“You know, we had to wear it. We had one in the front and one in the back. If you walked out in the street without it, you could have been shot. You had to wear.” Renee Salt, Holocaust survivor, on how it felt to wear the yellow star.
These are the harrowing stories of Holocaust survivors Renee, Vera and Arek. 
1. Renee Salt BEM, holding the yellow star survivors were forced to wear in Auschwitz.
“When we arrived, they started shouting and screaming. ‘Get off the train! Get a move on. Be quick. Leave the luggage.’ My father jumped off first. I jumped after him. After I jumped off, I didn’t see him anymore. He disappeared into thin air. Without a kiss, without a goodbye. He just disappeared. And I’ve never seen him again.
“I was lucky to be together with my mother. They took us to a hut and at the entrance, we met a young woman named Diane. She was well-dressed, well-fed, with a whip in her hand. And she said to us. ‘I’m very small, but I can beat you up very hard. Don’t forget.’ And she never forgot.
“It was so cold. I suffered from cold more than from hunger, if that’s possible.”
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2. Vera Schaufeld MBE, holding the necklace she was given as a child by her family in Czechoslovakia before she came to England on the Kindertransport.
“I was nine years old when I left home and my father who was a lawyer who had studied under the president, was on Hitler’s list. So, my father was imprisoned very soon. And later, my mother was murdered.
“My mother was somebody that my father met when he offered his window seat to her when he was visiting in Germany. My mother was the first person in her class to study to be a doctor, she had to go to the boy’s high school because in those days, the school in Germany that she went to didn’t have any lessons.
“I think that it’s really, really important for people to know how awful other groups can be to each other.”
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3. Arek Hersh, showing the number tattoo B7608 on his arm.
“From the ages of 11 to 15, I’ve been in different camps. And then eventually I came over with 300 other children to Windermere in the Lake District. And ever since I’ve been here.
“They gave us a piece of bread in the morning and some black coffee. For lunch we got some soup, and that was it for the day. No more food or drinks or anything.
“We went through such hell and it’s very important to remember these terrible things.”
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